# RGBAvatar: Reduced Gaussian Blendshapes for Online Modeling of Head Avatars

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12886 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12886/

## Key facts

- Cited by 29 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 41 of its 64 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14808/) (2020)
- [Dynamic Neural Radiance Fields for Monocular 4D Facial Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03065/) (2020)
- [gsplat: An Open-Source Library for Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06765/) (2024)
- [I M Avatar: Implicit Morphable Head Avatars from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07471/) (2021)
- [HeadNeRF: A Real-time NeRF-based Parametric Head Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05637/) (2021)
- [Neural Head Avatars from Monocular RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01554/) (2021)
- [PointAvatar: Deformable Point-based Head Avatars from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08377/) (2022)
- [SplattingAvatar: Realistic Real-Time Human Avatars with Mesh-Embedded Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05087/) (2024)
- [Towards Metrical Reconstruction of Human Faces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06607/) (2022)
- [Instant Volumetric Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12499/) (2022)
- [Nonlinear 3D Face Morphable Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03786/) (2018)
- [Robust High-Resolution Video Matting with Temporal Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11515/) (2021)
- [Reconstructing Personalized Semantic Facial NeRF Models From Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06108/) (2022)
- [RigNeRF: Fully Controllable Neural 3D Portraits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06481/) (2022)
- [Realistic One-shot Mesh-based Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08343/) (2022)
- [i3DMM: Deep Implicit 3D Morphable Model of Human Heads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14143/) (2020)
- [FlashAvatar: High-fidelity Head Avatar with Efficient Gaussian Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02214/) (2023)
- [MonoGaussianAvatar: Monocular Gaussian Point-based Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04558/) (2023)
- [SMIRK: 3D Facial Expressions through Analysis-by-Neural-Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04104/) (2024)
- [AvatarMAV: Fast 3D Head Avatar Reconstruction Using Motion-Aware Neural Voxels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13206/) (2022)
- [Towards a complete 3D morphable model of the human head](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08008/) (2019)
- [HeadGaS: Real-Time Animatable Head Avatars via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02902/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Blendshapes for Head Avatar Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19398/) (2024)
- [LatentAvatar: Learning Latent Expression Code for Expressive Neural Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01190/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [FlexAvatar: Learning Complete 3D Head Avatars with Partial Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15599/) (2025)
- [STAvatar: Soft Binding and Temporal Density Control for Monocular 3D Head Avatars Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19854/) (2025)
- [HyperGaussians: High-Dimensional Gaussian Splatting for High-Fidelity Animatable Face Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02803/) (2025)
- [Is It Really You? Exploring Biometric Verification Scenarios in Photorealistic Talking-Head Avatar Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00748/) (2025)
- [EmoTaG: Emotion-Aware Talking Head Synthesis on Gaussian Splatting with Few-Shot Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21332/) (2026)
- [FlexAvatar: Flexible Large Reconstruction Model for Animatable Gaussian Head Avatars with Detailed Deformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17717/) (2025)
- [TexAvatars : Hybrid Texel-3D Representations for Stable Rigging of Photorealistic Gaussian Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21099/) (2025)
- [High-Fidelity Mobile Avatars with Pruned Local Blendshapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01854/) (2026)
- [AvatarBack: Back-Head Generation for Complete 3D Avatars from Front-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.20623/) (2025)
- [ArchitectHead: Continuous Level of Detail Control for 3D Gaussian Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05488/) (2025)
- [Feed-forward Gaussian Registration for Head Avatar Creation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15811/) (2026)
- [Multi-view Consistent 3D Gaussian Head Avatars 'without' Multi-view Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25220/) (2026)
- [OmniFaceRig: Fully Automatic Inner-Mouth-Aware Face Rigging Across Diverse 3D Character Topologies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08043/) (2026)
- [One-Shot Feed-Forward 360circ Animatable Avatar via Inpainted UV-Space Gaussian Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12770/) (2026)
- [FHAvatar: Fast and High-Fidelity Reconstruction of Face-and-Hair Composable 3D Head Avatar from Few Casual Captures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23345/) (2026)
- [DipGuava: Disentangling Personalized Gaussian Features for 3D Head Avatars from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28003/) (2026)
- [Giving Faces Their Feelings Back: Explicit Emotion Control for Feedforward Single-Image 3D Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14541/) (2026)
- [SketchFaceGS: Real-Time Sketch-Driven Face Editing and Generation with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19202/) (2026)
- [Self-Learning Expression Deformations for Data-Efficient Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05912/) (2026)
- [FlexiAvatar: Unified 3D Gaussian Human Avatars Under Arbitrary Body Visibility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.19100/) (2026)
- [URHead: A Unified UV-Space Representation for Joint Mesh-3DGS Optimization in Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.22673/) (2026)
- [GRAPE: Graduated Routing for Articulated Portrait mesh Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.23657/) (2026)
- [RealDenseFace: Real-time Monocular 3D Face Reconstruction from Dense UV-space Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09238/) (2026)
- [AvatarDynamizer: From Static to Dynamic Human Avatars via Generative Dynamic Textures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.19900/) (2026)
- [MGAvatar: Mesh-Bound Gaussians for Head Avatar Geometry and Appearance Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12850/) (2026)
- [Relightable 3D Avatar Reconstruction with Semantic-Adaptive Motion-Illumination Responses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.24158/) (2026)
- [One Basis to Animate Them All: Gaussian Blendshape Distillation for Real-Time Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02207/) (2026)
- [ChromaGS: Text-Driven Semantic Editing of 4D Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03441/) (2026)
- [ManifoldSplat: Language-Guided Semantic Shape Editing of 3D Gaussian Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03599/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present Reduced Gaussian Blendshapes Avatar (RGBAvatar), a method for reconstructing photorealistic, animatable head avatars at speeds sufficient for on-the-fly reconstruction. Unlike prior approaches that utilize linear bases from 3D morphable models (3DMM) to model Gaussian blendshapes, our method maps tracked 3DMM parameters into reduced blendshape weights with an MLP, leading to a compact set of blendshape bases. The learned compact base composition effectively captures essential facial details for specific individuals, and does not rely on the fixed base composition weights of 3DMM, leading to enhanced reconstruction quality and higher efficiency. To further expedite the reconstruction process, we develop a novel color initialization estimation method and a batch-parallel Gaussian rasterization process, achieving state-of-the-art quality with training throughput of about 630 images per second. Moreover, we propose a local-global sampling strategy that enables direct on-the-fly reconstruction, immediately reconstructing the model as video streams in real time while achieving quality comparable to offline settings. Our source code is available at https://github.com/gapszju/RGBAvatar.